Sticking To Their (Price) Guns

I am admittedly bad at math and not an economics major. However, I do understand the basic principles of both retail and supply and demand. You advertise cheap prices of the in-demand products to get people in the door (prices which are still way above where they should be) and then once they are in the store you aim people towards the stuff they aren't interested in buying but which you have lowered the price of so much the consumer reaches a point that the deal is too good to pass up and they buy something they don't even really want. It's almost too easy.

Now, I don't think I am blowing anyone's mind when I say that both book stores and record stores are having a tough time these days. Both industries have become almost exclusively online-sales and therefore a lot of stores, especially the non-chain stores, have been forced to close. That is why I am always surprised when I go into either a book store or a record store (you know, when I can still find them) and look at the price of CDs and books. These things have remained constant for as long as I can remember. When facing the reality that there are people out there who are willing to find similar products for less money, every other retailer in the world will at least try and adjust their prices to the market. Not books or CDs sellers.

A new-release hardcover book is going to run you $24 dollars in the store, a number which continues to blow my mind. Do the people who set prices know the Internet exists and offers most of these books at nearly half the price? Even with the stupidly skewered cost of shipping it will still usually work out that the online price is better. Plus if all else fails and you're willing to wait a while for it to come in, you can go to the library (which I hope isn't a new concept) and get the same book for free. Yet books show no signs of going down in price. The same applies to CDs. When I was growing up a CD would cost you roughly $17. Do you know how much a CD costs today? $17. Everything else has gone up in price since I got out of high school, but not CDs.

That leads me to conclude that, much like cars, these people are clearing so much money on each sale that they don't need to sell a lot. I have a hard time believing it costs more to make a CD now than it did in the late 90s, so if they can get just one person to feel nostalgic enough to buy a physical copy of a CD instead of the digital copy through iTunes they have covered their profit margin for the month. (It also leads me to conclude that I way over-paid for CDs when I was in high school.) Either that or these guys are idiots and are all going to be out of business within the next 5 years. At least if that happens you'll finally see some low prices for hardcover books.